Halsted Holman, foundational rheumatology researcher and chair of medicine, dies at 99

Halsted Holman, MD, an emeritus professor of immunology and rheumatology, died June 22 surrounded by family at his home on the Stanford campus. He was 99.

“Hal was an amazing person, and we will miss him dearly,” said Lloyd Minor, MD, dean of the Stanford School of Medicine and vice president for medical affairs at Stanford University. “His impact lives through the science he pioneered, the people he mentored, and the programs he initiated and built.”

In 1960, Holman became chair of the Department of Medicine as the university relocated the medical school from San Francisco to Palo Alto. He hired many influential faculty members who not only built the medical school but also made transformational discoveries in their fields.

As a practicing rheumatologist, Holman approached his patients as equal partners in their care, thoroughly explaining his thinking and even giving out his phone number for late-night calls, his colleagues said. He was also an early adopter of telemedicine, often phoning patients who needed more regular check-ins.

“He would commonly call his patients between appointments to see how they were doing,” said Michael Lyon, MD, an adjunct clinical associate professor in immunology and rheumatology. “He had the unique ability to calm fears, explain complex issues in easily understandable language and soften it with some well-placed humor.”

“Outside of building Stanford Medicine, he wore many hats and had many legacies,” said Kate Lorig, DrPH, emerita research professor in immunology and hematology. “Most of all, we’ll remember his mentorship of so many who today are giants in their fields.”

Holman was a great listener who gave his mentees freedom and support; he was always interested in others’ professional growth, Lorig added. His colleagues noted that he was a consummate gentleman with an inextinguishable optimism and personal warmth. He was conscientious, motivated and energetic in doing what he thought was right, they said.

“Hal had a commanding presence, not simply by virtue of his intellect and scientific achievements, but by the force of his equanimity; humility; and, above all, his respect for the dignity of all people,” Lyon said. “He had a deep voice, which could boom when needed, but most often was calm, even, articulate and confident.”

A multifaceted career

Halsted Reid Holman was born in Cleveland in 1925. Medicine was in his blood long before it was his calling: His parents were physicians and Stanford faculty, having moved to California soon after his birth. His father, Emile Holman, MD, was chairman of surgery at Stanford Medicine for 30 years. His mother, Ann Peril Purdy, MD, was one of Johns Hopkins Medical School’s earliest female graduates and a clinical professor of pediatrics at Stanford Medicine.

They named their son after Emile Holman’s mentor at Johns Hopkins: William Stewart Halsted, the founder of modern American surgery.

Holman graduated from Yale University School of Medicine in 1949. He met Barbara Lucas in the Yale library; she was earning her PhD in public health. They married June 26, 1949, after Holman graduated. The young couple then spent three years in Europe, where Holman worked at the Carlsberg Laboratories in Copenhagen.

When they returned to the United States, Holman began a residency at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx, New York. He and Lucas also started a family, welcoming a son in 1952 and daughters in 1954 and 1956. Barbara completed her graduate work in 1955.

After completing his residency in 1955, Holman became a research associate and assistant physician at the Rockefeller Institute in New York. There he discovered that lupus was an autoimmune disease by finding the antibodies that define the illness. This pioneering work led to the field of immunology, Lorig said.

Holman joined Stanford Medicine in 1960, at 35, as the Berthold and Belle N. Guggenhime Professor and chairman of the Department of Medicine. Holman added faculty with biomedical skills and developed the department’s research, training and residency programs. He recruited 20 to 30 new faculty members who were conducting cutting-edge work, helping build Stanford Medicine into a national leader in biomedical research. He stepped down as chair in 1972.

During his early years at Stanford Medicine, Holman was instrumental in creating the national Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Training Program. The idea was to create a new type of doctor, one who understood the societal forces at play in health care, improving their ability to effect change within the system. The program offered two-year fellowships for post-residency training in epidemiology, sociology, economics and community medicine. He directed the Clinical Scholars program at Stanford Medicine from 1969 to 1996.

After raising three kids, Holman and Barbara’s interests diverged and they divorced. In 1985, he married Diana Dutton, the Clinical Scholars Program’s associate director. In 1987, they had a son.

For two decades, from 1977 to 1997, he was also the program director of the Stanford Multi-Purpose Arthritis Center.

Over the years, Holman wondered whether a specialty-based approach was the best for patient care. He thought there may be better ways to implement scientific research and makea difference for people with these illnesses. He was early in bringing medical research into patient practice using translational medicine approaches, his daughter Alison Holman said.

“He was most passionate about trying to help the medical education move from treating acute diseases to preventing chronic illness,” she said. “From early on, he saw that chronic disease was really the problem. If we don’t deal with chronic disease, we can’t improve the health of Americans.”

He turned his research interest toward health policy. In 1976, he founded the Midpeninsula Health Service, one of the first community-based family practice clinics in the United States. The clinic closed its downtown office in the fall of 1989 and moved into a Stanford facility to become Stanford’s first family practice teaching clinic.

“He hoped to build a health care system focused on the patient,” Lorig said. “This drove his thinking throughout his later career and life.”

Alison Holman said her father woke early in the morning and started dictating papers. Even when he became an emeritus professor in the early 2000s he remained engaged, publishing his last paper in 2020 at 95. His brain was sharp until the day he died, Alison Holman said, but his eyesight and hearing had started to go, making reading journal articles a challenge.

A driven life

Holman, who was at Stanford for more than 60 years, said in a 2015 Stanford oral history: “My view is that you’re most effective if you have deep roots. If you jump from one academic job to another, which is very common, you lose roots. I certainly have roots that are meaningful to me in the community and the department.”

Holman was passionate about equality in his community — not just in access to health care. When his children were young, the family was involved in the Vietnam War peace movement and the fight for civil rights, Alison Holman said, adding that her father’s belief was sparked by his parents, who felt that all people were equal and that everybody deserves respect and dignity.

Holman’s family and colleagues admired his dedication to doing what he thought was right.

“When meeting a lot of obstacles and barriers in getting something done, one of the things my father would always say was, ‘Don’t let the bastards get you down,’” his daughter said. “That was my dad’s attitude about life: ‘No obstacle is too big. No barrier is too big. We’re going to keep fighting for what’s right.’”

Holman shared serious dinner table conversations that challenged his children to think critically, but he had a light-hearted side, his daughter said. He loved classical music like Bach and Vivaldi. But he also liked swing music, including Glenn Miller, and would play the song “Tuxedo Junction” for the kids on the piano, Alison Holman said.

The family took vacations in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where they had a cabin in Alpine Meadows, California, near Lake Tahoe. In the summer, they hiked and camped, often alongside Holman’s brother and family. In the winter, they went downhill skiing.

Holman earned a number of accolades. In 2001, he and Lorig won the Vision Award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for their Improving Chronic Illness Care Program. He earned the Presidential Gold Medal from the American College of Rheumatology in 2001 and the John Phillips Memorial Award for Outstanding Work in Clinical Medicine — for unraveling autoimmunity in lupus and founding the Clinical Scholar Program — from the American College of Physicians in 2004.

Holman is survived by his wife of 39 years, Diana Dutton of Stanford, California; his children, Mike Holman, Andrea Reyes, Alison Holman and Geoffrey Holman; seven grandchildren; and one great-grandchild. His first wife, Barbara Lucas Holman, and his brothers, Shaun Holman and Dave Holman, died before him.